News

Bryn Summers says her internship at NASA was "a wonderful experience for me, one of the best in my life." Photo credit: Jerry Mann

Environment focuses on progress, growth, and innovation

As a NASA intern this summer, Game Design major Bryn Summers worked for the Space Communications and Navigation division. Her tasks included collaborating with another intern to finish an educational game — creating assets, implementing sound and working on the user interface.

The most valuable part of the experience, she says, was “being exposed to the NASA values and atmosphere.”

Summers found the Brook Park, Ohio environment to be focused on progress, growth and innovation. “This promotes personal growth, strength, and inspiration,” she says. She also found it valuable to be around employees from varying disciplines.

One of the biggest challenges of moving from student to NASA intern was making sure she was well rested. “I’m not saying everything else was easy, because it really wasn’t, but I feel I was well prepared for my experience here and anything I didn’t know already I happily learned,” she says.

Among the joys? Being considered “the art person” again. “I feel that all of us CIA students in high school were considered ‘the art kid,’ but once you go to a school all about art, you can’t be that anymore. I love being around so many artists, but being around engineers, programmers and data analysts was extremely satisfying.”

One colleague impressed her with his love for “learning and math and simply everything there is,” she says. “I will be working with him to learn some calculus and basic engineering, and I hope these skills will help me apply my art skills to more diverse settings.”